To celebrate the bicentenary of Wagner's birth, Sir Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera House, looks at the epic composition which changed opera and the theatre for ever - the Ring of the Nibelungen.

As students of the blues will know, the best music is often made in the most oppressive conditions. Discrimination and hardship led many African-Americans to abandon Alabama; they took their music with them, and this is how Alabama's blues spread to other parts of the United States. The musicians gathered here may have made their name in other locations, but their music is a direct and immensely entertaining link back to the Yellowhammer State where they were born and raised.